Crusification
by enigma939
Summary: Post-Identity, pre-Supremacy. Told from Bourne's POV as he painfully examines himself and analyses his skills and the discoveries he has made about his past.


**Crusification**

A/N: This fic is set shortly after the events of The Bourne Identity. It's told from Jason's point of view as he struggles to come to terms with the discoveries he has made about his identity. Please note that the title is not meant to convey any religious symbolism or theme and actually represents Bourne's painful analysis of himself.

Jason Bourne and all related characters and events are the property of Robert Ludlum's estate and Universal Studios.

He stared out over the horizon; into the Mediterranean sunset. His hazel eyes appeared blue in the amber rays of the sun. Another curious fact he'd discovered about himself; his eyes appeared to change colour in different light conditions. It was a rare quality, and one he strongly suspected had helped him in…whatever it was he used to do!

His occupation…his _former _occupation, as he had consistently reminded himself over the past few months…was not something he particularly wished to dwell upon! What happened had happened…there was no point in brooding over the past. Of course, he also realized there was a certain amount of hypocrisy on his part with regards to this subject. Not very long ago, he had wanted desperately to know who he was…who he had been before his bullet-ridden body had been fished out of the very sea at whose horizons he was now gazing at. But that was _then_. And this was _now_. Now, he knew who he was, or at any rate, had a vague idea of _what _he had been. He even had a memory…unclear, chaotic, violent; above all things, violent; but it was a memory none the less, a connection to a forgotten life. And whatever he had learnt in Paris, whatever meager evidence he had succeeded in gathering, one thing was clear; the life he had left behind was far from ideal. And the person he was had clearly been someone he certainly did not wish to know any longer…

The man called Jason Bourne (though his name could easily have been John Michael Kane, Paul Kay, Gilberto de Piento, or any one among other aliases) had been a killer! An _assassin_! And as much as he would like to deny the fact, run away from the truth, the evidence was incontrovertible.

He stared at the weapon in his hands. At the Sig Sauer automatic pistol. Its sight repulsed him now, yet in some strange way he felt connected to it. It had been a tool he had used considerably in the past; it was in fact a vital part of his past! He had an instinctive knowledge of it. Somehow, through some strange and inexplicable intuition, he knew all there was to know about the weapon. He could assemble or dismantle it within seconds, in sheer darkness if necessary. He knew how to insert the shells in the magazine, how to insert the magazine into the weapon. He knew what precautions to take in order to ensure it did not get jammed. He knew the correct way to grip it, the correct way to hold it, the proper position in which to aim it. In his mind, he could hear the echoes of a gunshot from a faraway past. He did not remember when or where, but he had heard it hundreds of times. It was a part of his world, a part of his life!

And then there were other, more silent weapons to employ. Knives, with razor-sharp edges, that could be plunged into stomachs without giving the target a moment to even gasp for air! A cord of wire, which could be looped around an unsuspecting victim, cutting off his air supply for the few seconds that were necessary to bring about death. Blunt instruments, like paperweights, when struck at the right places, could also prove lethal, or at any rate, induce complete unconsciousness for prolonged periods of time.

And then there were even more subtle tools of the trade. Lethal poisons, many easily disguised. Digitalis, strychnine, morphine…the names vaguely floated through his head. Once, a few days previously, he had read a newspaper article on lethal poisons and was shocked to discover that he knew more about the subject matter than what was published in the articles! And then there had been the reports of a new nerve gas developed by the US military; reports that were only recently declassified and made public, and yet Jason felt…no, he did not feel, he _knew _all that classified information already. What more, he was certain; he had seen the effects of the gas, displayed in slightly macabre images on the television screen, before, in real life!

And it was not just knowledge of weapons. He _himself _was a weapon. He had been startled with the violent precision with which he had disarmed and knocked out the two cops in Zurich, but now he had come to realize that the violence and skill required for unarmed combat came naturally to him. He did not remember the names of the precise martial art styles and techniques he employed, but he knew he was a master of them! He could use his lethal skills instantly, _instinctively_, at a moments notice. His limbs were lethal weapons, almost as lethal, if not more, than a gun or a knife. And though there was precision, there was also an animal like fluidity in his violent movements. He was sure he could kill a man with his bare hands. He was sure he _had _killed men with his bare hands.

But worst of all were the nightmares. The nightmares of violence, of death. Of corpses and slayings. Of predators and prey; with him often playing the role of the former, but occasionally also of the latter. Of dark streets and hotel rooms and semi-lit restaurants. Of men and women who gave him directions, _instructions_…to complete an _assignment_! Of the view from an infrared sniperscope, of the clicking sound of a round of ammunition entering the firing chamber. And of gunshots and shrieks of dying men.

The nightmares did not prove much. Marie had said as much. But, he had often argued with her, it was not just the nightmares, but the _skills _he had possessed, still possessed, which were the real evidence. And the memory of Marseilles, of what had transpired on a yacht off the coast of Marseilles. The memory of a darkened lounge, and his unsuspecting victim sleeping on a couch, and the children! Oh God, the children, the children he would have had to have… _eliminated _(he couldn't bear to even think of the word)…so that the _mission _would not be compromised. The feelings of nausea, the waves of revulsion that had shot up from his stomach to his head. The searing pain in his forehead. The mad rush for the open air, for _freedom_. And the sounds of gunshots and the excruciating two pinpricks of pain that had emanated from his back. The spray of the water and…oblivion!

How often had the scene replayed itself in his mind over and over again, as though it was his last link to sanity…to his mind. To his past. To something he was instinctively drawn towards…but consistently tried to ignore, to escape. But the evidence he had gathered was vindicated by this _proof_…by this _fragment_ of a memory. And the final touch of legitimacy had been added by the words of a man, a man from his shadowed past, whom he had cornered in an apartment in Paris. For that man, Jason could not recall his name, had called him a 'thirty million dollar weapon'.

Marie had often tried to divert his mind from the memory. "In the end, you didn't do it, and that's all that matters", she had said. "But that doesn't change much does it", he had replied, staring at her with helpless eyes. "It doesn't really atone for all the other…_things _I did".

"You don't remember them, Jason. What you don't know doesn't exist for you. It can't", she'd insisted.

"It does for me", he yelled stubbornly, causing her to flinch. He had sighed, calmed down, and apologized to her, before saying, in a low monotone, "I can't remember the…_details_, but I know that they're there somewhere. _They _happened. The things I dream about think about. Somewhere, sometime. Maybe not exactly how I think they happened, but they did. Believe me", he'd pleaded.

It was a strange paradox. He'd sworn to turn his mind back on the past, to stop brooding over what had been, and what would never be again. And yet, what he was; what he knew or thought he knew, kept returning to haunt him. It was like an empty basket which he did not want to fill, but yet felt compelled to fill through vague instincts that he had honed in a lifetime of…what exactly?! Killing, death, violence….assassinations!

Again and again it haunted him. Whatever _it _was. He looked at maps, atlases; he found a lot of names familiar. There were other names, names of cities, of people, even, which Marie had heard him mutter in his sleep. They had conducted research on the names. Most of them turned up a dead end, but one didn't. It had turned out to be the last name of a prominent South American military dictator who had been killed in a car accident in Spain two years ago. And in some unfathomable way, he _knew _everything there was to know about the accident that was in actuality no real 'accident'. He could picture the face of the victim…it was a blur, but he could picture it nonetheless. He remembered of what make the car had been in which the dictator had met his end…what security features it had had, and how a low-level explosive had been connected to the fuel-line; an explosive that was itself destroyed in the resulting inferno, leaving no traces, the results of the subsequent investigation being that the fuel-line was defective and the engine had been over-heated. He had read the newspaper article about the dictator's death before…he did not remember where, but he had read it, with the knowledge of one who knew more than what had been printed…

And there were other names, other assassinations, reported in the news from time to time. He did not have the instinctive knowledge of them; he had _not _been there. But it all seemed so familiar. Mysterious deaths in accidents; assassinations of prominent political leaders and even businessmen, unsolved murders…they all reminded him of _something_.

Marie too had come to realize that the conclusions he had drawn with regards to occupation were inescapable. But she was also persistent in reminding him that it was all over; that it bore no relevance to his present. That he had walked away from that life when he had fled from that darkened lounge on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea. And yet, Jason still felt that there had been no redemption involved in his actions. He did not deserve any. Sparing one life did not, _could _not, ignore the countless other lives that had been taken. Sometimes, Jason even felt that perhaps it would have been better if the bullets fired by Nykwama Wombosi's bodyguard had ended his life; if it had been a corpse that had been discovered by the crew of a fishing boat rather than an empty shell who possessed dangerous skills for no sane reason known to him; who was racked with guilt over actions of his he could no longer remember, who faced death in every shadow from unseen unknown assailants. For he somehow had a feeling of certainty that the warning he had delivered to the man in Paris would go unheeded. That the people who knew who he really was, the people who _made _him what he was, would one day return to kill him. _Terminate_ him, as he somehow knew they would phrase it as. And then he would have to be ready. Then he would have to become that killer, that monster who he once was.

Was that why he couldn't ignore the past? Because it could threaten his present and his future? Or was it simply because he could not bear to live with the feeling of being unmoored. A man can live with the knowledge of a dark and violent past, and slowly, but surely, come to accept it and move on. But could a man live without the knowledge of a past, with only vague inklings of its inherent darkness, and move on? No. Such a man would continue to run in undefined circles, brooding and obsessing over his non-existent past until he could find the answers which he might perhaps never find. Even if it drove him insane. But then again, perhaps, amnesia was a kind of insanity…

"Stop it, Jason! Stop crucifying yourself!" Marie had told him more than once, when she saw him pouring over old newspaper articles, or in online newspaper archives, when he relentlessly went over lists of the names he'd muttered in his sleep, when he broke down and reassembled his gun again and again as though he was waiting for the fact to sink in that he knew how to do it, when he stared at the visa stamps on his passports, hoping that the names and dates would jog his memory…

Oh God! I can't help it Marie. I want to know and I don't want to know. I don't want to live with it but I feel I can't live without it. A building has to have a foundation stone so that it can stand. A kid must go to school before he goes to college. A man must learn the alphabet before he can write. A soldier must start out as a private, before he becomes a Sergeant, a Lieutenant, a _Captain_ (somehow that rank seemed significant to him) or even a General. The same way, a man must have a past, in order to have a present, or a future. It's the natural order of things; and it's why I'm unnatural.

These thoughts had run through his head innumerable times before. And they would continue to do so again and again. He stared out into the horizons of the Mediterranean, the sea which had spawned him as he knew himself. One day, he thought, he would find out who he really was. One day, he would find out how he became what he had been until he'd boarded a yacht off the coast of Marseilles. One day he would have all the answers.

Until then, he would continue to avoid the truth, unsuccessfully, and the subtle yet ever-present self-Crusification would persist…


End file.
